I'm starting to get that "kid on Christmas Eve" excited feeling now. Since I got hurt about 5 or 6 weeks out from Boston, its been a while since I've been this close to a big race and I've forgotten about the giddy feeling in the weeks leading up to it!
This week was largely successful as I continue to sharpen for the goal race. My left leg has still been troublesome, though to a lesser extent. I only had to skip one run this week as oppose to the 2, 3, or 4 that I have been in weeks past. It never affected any of the runs I did complete. So as long as I keep stretching, and stay on top of it with compression, it should hold up.
The week:
Monday: AM: 4 miles, easy
PM: 10.5 miles total, with about 3.5-4 miles at 5:40 pace or faster. This was supposed to be an easy run, then some of the people I was running with dropped the hammer about 1/3 of the way through. At first I held back, then my ego took over as I said something along the lines of "Man fuck this, I didn't come out here to get dropped." Of course, by then these guys had about a half mile gap on me and had started at 5:40 pace, so I had to haul at 5K pace just to catch up, and managed to stay with them until about 3/4 of a mile to go when I ran out of gas.
In the future, I'll keep in mind that Monday afternoons may not always be easy...
Tuesday: Rest. Got in a sports massage, which I have never done before. I believe it did help, though it certainly wasn't some kind of magic bullet.
Wednesday: AM: 9 miles, 5 moderate, 4 easy
PM: 7 miles, easy/moderate
Thursday: AM: ~9 miles total. I ran about 4.5 miles around the city, met up with some friends who were doing 800s at 3:00 minute pace, did a few of those, and then ran back home for about 9 miles total. Speedwork for them, marathon pace pickups for me, but we appreciated each others company on a rather dreary rainy morning.
Friday: AM: 3 miles. moderate
This was the first day my leg started bothering me. I canned my easy afternoon run and opted just to keep compression on my leg. It paid off because my weekend went really well.
Saturday:
10 miles at marathon pace: 6:38, 6:07, 5:58, 5:55, 6:00, 6:07, 5:52, 5:53, 5:46, 5:53
I'm rather happy with this run, even if the last few miles were fast. Baltimore got hit with its first winter storm even though it was October 29th. Despite 33 degree temperatures, a mix of snow, rain, and ice pellets, I managed to run pretty evenly. I used the first mile as a warm up and then hit it. The 4 were a bit fast because I was getting really cold and needed to get back to my car! Its rough to get hit with such cold weather so abruptly. Most importantly, after feeling like shit for the first 3 miles, I settled in really nicely and just kept knocking off the miles.
Sunday:
16 miles in the following format: 2 mile warm up, 2 miles at tempo pace, 6 miles easy, 4 miles at tempo pace, 2 miles easy. I have actually never done a workout like this and wanted to give it a try. I actually liked it. The second tempo interval was a bit tougher with 10 miles already on my legs, even if 8 of them were easy. I can see why people do workouts like this. In the future, I'll experiment more with changing the length of the on/off intervals.
The first 2 mile tempo was at 5:40 pace, the second at around 5:30-5:35. Overall, I felt strong. I've got a 10K coming up next weekend where I both PR'ed big time and won last year (Rockville 10K) and will try to repeat both of those this year. I'm thinking going out at 5:25-5:30 pace is not out of the question one bit.
Total Mileage: 68.5 miles...yea its not 70+ but what's more important is I still feel sharp, and my leg isn't killing me.
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